About 100 people camped out with mattresses and sleeping
bags in Zuccotti Park as demonstrations against financial firms
continued for an 11th day. Sarandon, 64, who appeared last year
in Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” toured an
area that includes a makeshift kitchen and library with titles
such as “The Wage Slave’s Glossary” and “Nickel and Dimed: On
(Not) Getting By in America.”(For a slide show of Amy Arbus’s
portraits of Wall Street protesters, click here.)

“I’m here to understand what’s going on and to lend my
support,” Sarandon, who won an Academy Award for best actress
for her role in the 1995 film “Dead Man Walking,” said in an
interview. “There’s a lot of different kinds of people here who
want to shift the paradigm to something that’s addressing the
huge gap between the rich and the poor.”

The group plans to march through the financial district
each business day to mark the New York Stock Exchange’s opening
and closing bells. The protest, dubbed “#OccupyWallStreet,”
aims to get President Barack Obama to establish a commission to
end “the influence money has over our representatives in
Washington,” according to the website of Adbusters, a group
promoting the demonstration.

‘Continuum of Force’

“We’re raising awareness of the fact that the current
economic system is changeable,” said Dylan O’Keefe, 19, of
Northampton, Massachusetts, who said he attended about five days
of protests. “I really don’t have faith in the political
process anymore, mostly because of corporate interests. I don’t
even plan on voting.”

About 80 of the 100 people arrested since the
demonstrations began were taken into custody on Sept. 24, when a
police officer used pepper spray “in a continuum of force that
obviated the use of batons,” Paul Browne, a spokesman for the
New York City Police Department, said in an e-mail.

“Protesters who engage in civil disobedience can expect to
be arrested,” Browne said. “Those who resist arrest can expect
some measure of force will be used in making them.”

The Sept. 24 march and the use of pepper spray “really
inspired me to come here,” said Esther Martin, 24, of New
Orleans, who said she had a temporary job selling Bob Marley and
Marilyn Monroe posters before joining the protest. “It’s giving
a body to the discontent people feel from not having jobs or
money, and the disappointment about bailouts for Wall Street.”

Zhi Wang, a smoothie vendor with a food cart on the park’s
south sidewalk, said he’s likely lost “a couple hundred”
dollars from protesters occupying the area.

“Right now it’s slow,” said Wang, 22. “There used to be
lunch people sitting here. Now I don’t see any.”